


As I’m locked in these towers

by TaleWeaver



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Lady of Shalott - Freeform, Mythology References, fixit fic - myth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-26 21:33:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17753870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleWeaver/pseuds/TaleWeaver
Summary: All Sansa knows is this tower. The mirror that shows the present, and the tapestry she weaves that shows the future. Until HE appears, first in her tapestry, then her glass.  Perhaps it will mean her death to leave the tower - but it will be worth it to meet him at last.  For she is more than half-sick of shadows…For Jonxsansafanfiction tumblr “Love Songs” event 2019; Day 2





	As I’m locked in these towers

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the painting ‘The Lady of Shalott’ by John William Waterhouse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_of_Shalott_(painting)  
> Title comes from the song ‘Shalott’ by Emilie Autumn.

_Like a river flows, surely to the sea_

_Darling so it goes, some things are meant to be_

 

All Sansa has ever known is the tower.

She knows there was a time when she wasn’t here, when she was taught to read and write and weave and even cook simple things, but she no longer remembers that time.

Now, there is only the window she is forbidden to look out of.  The mirror that reflects what happens outside the window, and the tapestry frame.  The boxes of wool threads that never run out, and the pantry that is never full but never empties either.  She knows the turn of the seasons by how the food and drink in the pantry changes.  Ale in the spring, and cider in autumn.  Mead in winter, and wine in summer.

When the curse drives her to sit at the tapestry and weave it’s pictures, her hands reach for the wool without her willing them.  She looks at the mirror, and her fingers weave the events she sees there without her conscious design.

Until one day, she looks down at her weaving, by merest chance.  Even as her jaw drops in shock, her spellbound fingers keep working.

 The mirror shows the river outside her tower, the dock and the boat she floats away in only in her dreams.  But the tapestry shows a terrifying wall of ice, with a black castle huddling against it’s base.

 For a week, Sansa weaves the castle and the Wall. Until a young man begins to appear in the tapestry, with black clothing and hair, and just a touch of frost-grey for his eyes.

For another week, she weaves winter-frozen forests as he rides through them on a great brown horse.

 When her hands reach for every shade of blue and green in the box to show him taking ship on the ocean, the forest starts appearing in her mirror.

 When the tapestry shows him reaching the meadows of the Riverlands, she sees the ocean for the first time in the mirror.

 The day the mirror and the tapestry both show the same scene – her knight at the castle she has woven a thousand times and nicknamed ‘Camelot’ – Sansa can bear it no longer.

 For as long as she has been in this tower, she has known that if she leaves, the curse that binds her to mirror and tapestry will kill her.  But what if she leaves… and she doesn’t die?  What if it is only her own obedience and fear keeping her trapped here?  Even if the curse is as real as she has been told by someone she no longer remembers, Sansa no longer cares.  It is worth dying to meet her Knight.  The mirror and tapestry can only show the truth, and she knows that he is everything that the stories and songs have promised her.  He is everything she has ever longed for in her empty, lonely life.

 She is far more than half-sick of shadows, of only seeing the world through reflections and pictures instead of her own eyes.  She needs to see if the sky is really the shade she weaves in her tapestry. She craves knowing if the wind is truly cold.

 Sansa pulls the completed tapestry off the loom, several moon’s worth of work.  Everything that shows her Knight, and a sennight before that of her tower.  She takes the mirror off the wall; she will not leave it for some other girl to be trapped in front of.  She wraps up her winter gown and her neither-winter-nor-summer gown in her fur cloak and silk over-gown.  She uses her drying-cloth to wrap all the food left in the pantry.  It takes some time to drag everything down the stairs to the front door.

 Sansa heaves and strains to open the huge, heavy front door.  But it isn’t locked.

 The most time-consuming part is painting her name on the boat.  While it dries, it takes only a moment to lay her two small bundles in the boat.  But by the time she has laid out the tapestry, and cushioned the mirror face-down in its folds, the paint is dry. 

 Sansa sits in the boat, settling herself comfortably, and the chains keeping it attached to the dock break of their own accord.

 As the current takes the boat, Sansa looks at the sky, and it really is the same shade of blue.

 The further the boat floats downstream, the more the blood freezes in her veins, and the slower her heart beats.

 The curse is real, just as she was told.

 Sansa is not sorry.  She only wants to see her Knight before the end.

 

  ***

 

Jon is at the docks of Riverrun when the little boat comes floating downstream.  He’s too busy arguing with Sam and Dolorous Edd to notice it at first.   Sam is the one who looks up the river and shakes his arm to direct his gaze toward the little vessel.

 The current brings the boat to the dock, as if it were deliberately steered, but the only person in the boat looks to be sleeping.

 As Edd finds a rope to fasten at the gunwhale, Sam exclaims, “Jon!  There’s some kind of magic artifact in there!”

 Jon almost turns his back to trudge back to the castle.  He has had more than enough of magic.

 But Sam is already bringing something wrapped in a tapestry onto the dock.  As he unwraps it, Jon is already trying to rouse the passenger, to no avail.  He wobbles as he climbs into the boat, wobbles even more as he picks up the slender form with streaming red hair and climbs back onto the dock to lay her down.

 Jon reaches for the girl’s wrist, to find it cold and still. 

 Edd’s startled cry grabs Jon’s attention, even as he reaches out his other hand to part the fire-kissed hair that obscures her face.

 Edd spreads out the tapestry further, as Sam cradles it’s contents in his arms.

 “Jon, it’s a mirror!  A real magic mirror!  I don’t know what it does, but no one’s ever seen one at the Citadel. Oh, where’s the boat from-” Sam looks towards the boat, and reads aloud, “Sansa of Shalott.  Shalott.  Isn’t that that weird tower between the Neck and the Vale?  The one that Lady Melisandre always refuses to go near?”

 Jon’s fingers wrap gently around the dead girl’s hand, holding it like a lover would.

 “Bugger towers.  Look at this!” Edd snarls, and gestures at the tapestry.

 Jon looks, and his heart nearly stops - again.  The tapestry shows **him**.  It shows his journey from the Wall to Riverrun.  It shows his entire second life until this morning.

 Something stirs underneath his fingers, and Jon looks back down at the girl.  She no longer looks like she is made of ivory, but more porcelain.  Her hand is no longer quite so cold in his, and Jon realizes that the movement was a pulse slowly beginning again under his touch.

 Under his gaze, the long eyelashes slowly flutter, and her eyes open.  Sky-blue eyes that widen in recognition of his face.  A smile that blooms like a flower across her rose-petal lips.

 Jon gazes back at her in wonder.  Somewhere deep in his spell-bound heart, he begins to understand at last. 

Finally, the purpose of his second life becomes clear.

 

_Take my hand, take my whole life too_

_For I can't help falling in love with you_

_(Can’t Help Falling in Love - Elvis Presley)_


End file.
